I was probably about 11 when I started doing most of the cooking. We had the same thing almost all the time. Chuck roast with potatoes, carrots, and rice on Sundays. The rest of the time were fried pork chops, fried chicken, hamburger steaks, fried freshwater fish, ham, meatloaf, stews, and breakfast suppers. The meats were served with three vegetable sides and biscuits or rolls. We had seafood when we visited my grandmother near Mobile, AL on the coast.

My grandmother cooked turkey and oyster dressing for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

There was no Mexican, Italian, or any other cuisines.

Does frozen pizza count?? I did a lot of dinners for myself and my father in middle school and high school. My mother was ill, and in and out of the hospital for long stretches. But he was easy to please, and nothing needed to be very complicated. Breakfast for dinner was done, as was fried pork chops and chili sizes, or chili cheese dogs. Vegetables just didn't happen. I didn't have any cook-books to refer to, so I just figured things out. I can recall having a number of dismal failures. I remember baking a meatloaf with no liquid or eggs, as there was no one to tell me it needed it. It was OK. Just a giant size hamburger patty, that ended up being broken up for a later spaghetti dinner. Interesting that it wasn't even considered that maybe he could come up with something???? I was the female, so it was up to me. ( I understand he was working all day of course.) Times have sure changed since then, fortunately.

Trying to think about my first dinner. I started out more interested in baking and got my first cookbook (Betty Crocker) at 9. I have a memory of making a meatloaf likely around that age. I remember lining whole dill pickles down the center of it thinking it could be good. It wasn’t!🥴 My first roast chicken was maybe the mid 70’s. Mainly because my MIL’s were so good. DH and I were very early in our dating phase and he loved them. One thing that took me a while to learn was timing. I’d start a meal like lasagna or pot roast so late that dinner was crazy late. Things have sure changed since then. Now I’m all about doing as much ahead as possible.

ETA - Just saw hobbitmom mentioned dismal failures. Mine were oatmeal cookies when I was maybe 7 or 8. The recipe called for shortening, so I figured the bacon fat my mom had in a canister on the stove would work. I can still remember the taste of those cookies!🤢

I was eight-years-old when my grandmother took me into the kitchen and taught me how to make spaghetti sauce, roll the meatballs, and construct garlic bread. More than sixty years later and I still make the meal the exact same way.

My first meal was an extremely inauthentic recipe for chicken enchiladas which used a can of cream of chicken soup. It turned out more like a casserole than a pan of enchiladas. Later both my younger brothers married Mexican girls, one a Mexican American from El Paso and the other a Mexican girl from Veracruz, Mexico. I have eaten and, with them, made authentic Mexican and TexMex meals for many years now and don't think I could ever eat the chicken enchilada recipe I made in college.

I can't even remember when I roasted my first chicken, it was definitely before I was a teenager. I was standing at the sink peeling tomatoes for canning when I was so small I stood on a chair and Grandma would get me up at 5 am to "help" stuff the turkey on Thanksgiving. Bless her, it was probably a lot more work to get a 4 year old out of bed at 5 am to stuff a turkey than to do it herself, but she always involved me and then bragged that I "stuffed that turkey" myself so everyone could tell me how good it was.

The first thing I made by myself was bread. Grandma told me that it was "flour, water, salt and yeast" and if I ruined it that it wasn't expensive. She also said the more I handled it the better it would be, so plain white bread was my first solo dish.

My first actual meal came from a Campbell's soup cookbook my Aunt Ronni got me when I was 7, it was something called "Penthouse Chicken", which I served with mashed potatoes and some vegetable out of the garden that I don't remember. My Dad said he LOVED it, and encouraged me to make it every other week or so. Now I look back and I think he was just trying to enourage me to cook more and take some of the cooking duties from Grandma because the recipe doesn't sound good at all any more, LOL.

We didn't eat anything "exotic" like tacos or lasagna although Grandma did make spaghetti sometimes. I remember my first pizza, I was in high school and it was from a box, Appian Way. There were no pizza joints in town. Grandma made it once and announced that she could do better and promptly made pizza crust. After that she would make two, one for pizza for the rest of the family and one plain crust for butter and jam for she and I, neither of us liked pizza. Maybe that's why I'm still not crazy about it!

Annie

Loving these stories.

My first home cooking involved making a cake on Sunday afternoon, creaming the butter and sugar and icing it with a peculiar marshmallow sort of icing and making coloured sugar with food colouring and sprinkling that on the marshmallow. I was about 12. About that time I was given the Betty Crocker childhood book which I loved everything about, the recipes, the drawings and made lots of things from it.

I don’t remember my mother or Grandmother actively teaching me how to cook. Rather I observed what they did and asked questions. I never did master my Gran’s method of making pastry with two knives cutting in beef “drippings”, which is a shame because I loved those flat apple pies she made served with clotted cream.

My first grown up meal I remember cooking in my first own rental place at 19, was sort of chevapchichi, minced beef skinless sausages, heavy on the garlic and herbs with a salad with vinaigrette dressing, which I tried to reproduce after having had a meal in an Italian restaurant. I learned to cook in that character filled old place on a very old gas cream and green stove called a Kookaburra brand. I tried to cook many things, I recall poaching fresh peaches, stuffing the pit hole with raspberries and then placing the whole thing in a light toffee so you had to crack the coating. I would never attempt something like this now.

I roasted my first chicken in the 90’s and it was a revelation how tasty it could be. Previously I only had bought rotisserie chicken.

I remember making all sorts of things with my older siblings, like baking cupcakes and cakes from a box. I do know I helped out in high school with liver/bacon/onions and helping out, but the first time was when my parents were out of town, and I made spaghetti for a few friends. It was mostly from canned tomato sauce etc. I found the top of a can in the sauce! LOL! Oh well, we thought we were very grown up having a dinner party! LOL

My mom was a SAHM but did some teaching and tutoring after school during my junior and senior high school years. During this time she’d prepare dinners which I’d be in charge of warming up or whatever, which grew to partial prep and me finishing, to me cooking some meals completely. I think it’d have to be spaghetti and meat sauce which I first could take total credit for.

I've never roasted a whole chicken because I don't like dark meat...sorry to the purists. Neither my mother nor her mother liked to cook so I never learned to cook until I was living on my own as an adult. I remember making chocolate chip cookies with Crisco solid shortening. We didn't have any measuring cups, so I had to measure the fat with a tablespoon...16 tablespoons for a cup's worth.

My first meals for guests were things like King Ranch casserole or something we called pepper steak, which was an odd combination of pan-seared beef, tomatoes, bell peppers and soy sauce.

I don't cook much these days unless I'm having dinner guests. Then, I like to try out different recipes. I'll never be an adept cook the way so many of you are, but I can usually put together a tasty, if not exactly inspired, meal.

Oh, and I'm a master of roasting a bone-in turkey breast. It's always moist and flavorful. My father was overjoyed when I took over the holiday meals. No more turkey cooked to the sawdust stage.

I don’t think I cooked anything properly until I met SWMBO, in my mid twenties.

Before that I merely “fed myself”, with modern convenience food wonders like TV dinners, Tuna Helper, Mac’n’Cheese, Lean Cuisine, and the Zeus of such fare, the Holy Top Ramen.

One of my friends and roommates had a shrine to Top Ramen. A miniature Chinese temple with lanterns and a gilded throne upon which sat a package of The Holy Ramen in all its glory. That about summarizes what we ate.

I am rather nostalgic about TV dinners. DD and I have a project to buy the segmented trays and make really good TV dinners, then wrap and freeze them. Someday.

I also recall eating a lot of freeze-dried backpacking food, 2AM hot dogs from Top Dog in Berkeley, burritos from El Farolito Taqueria in the Mission, road food and Pea Soup up and down the I-5, 3AM knishes at Canter’s Jewish Deli in West Hollywood.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t been exposed to cooking and good food, mostly by my grandmother but also in France. It was just that I learned more about eating than cooking because, oink oink.

Anyway, SWMBO says the first thing I ever cooked for her was steaks that I converted to leather. She can mock my early cooking all she wants. I remember her calling her sister one Thanksgiving, asking which end of the turkey to stuff?

The first thing I remember cooking that was decent was a recipe from the Frugal Gourmet. We were staying in a beach cabin, one of his cookbooks was there, I went to the market and got the stuff for “clam linguini” and, to my surprise, it was easy and good.

After that I got quite interested in learning how to cook. My Lammie (L.A. mom) taught me, as did her son who’d been to culinary school. All the Asian stuff had to be learned from books and TV shows, though. My grandmother was too old to cook by then.

I started with baking around 10 ish. My mum showed me a basic Victoria sponge and short crust pastry. I made fairy cakes, jam tarts, cheese straws. Choux pastry I learned from a book. I never made dinner. It wasn't a meal we ate. In the week I had school lunches and at weekends mum made lunch. In the evening we had tea which was bread and butter and cake. At school we learned a basic ' brown stew' which is the foundation for a hundred casseroles, a cheese sauce which gave us the roux technique, baked eggs in potatoes which showed us how eggs behave with heat and soused herrings which taught us about sweet sour flavours. It was a good grounding in basic techniques.

The first entire meal I recall making was for a friend when I was about 15. Pork chops with pineapple and apple pie. I made pastry leaves for the top. I still remember the friend's mother, instead of saying 'well done' simply remarking that one doesn't decorate sweet pies. Only savoury.

Ours might be the only home that never had roast chicken! My mom always bought parts and fried it...but it wasn't Southern fried style, just seasoned with flour and spices, browned in oil, then a bit of water added, covered and cooked. So the exterior was tasty but not crisp.

I probably started cooking by baking cookies, but I honestly have no memory. It seems I just learned to cook by watching my mom. I don't think she had the temperament to actually "teach" me, but I could be wrong. I was pretty independent by 11 or 12 because she was widowed and had to go to work, so I know I would start dinner or cook it completely at a pretty young age. Basic home cooking, pot roast, pork chops, sirloin roasts, pork roasts, spaghetti with red meat sauce (no meatballs), lamb chops, meatloaf, Appian Way pizza from a box, TV dinners!

I didn't become interested in expanding my cooking horizons until I started babysitting for a woman who made slightly more interesting food. I was probably 14 and she taught me how to make a few things and when I was a little older, I started looking for recipes in magazines. We didn't have extra money for exotic ingredients, but once I was working, I began making things that were different from my mom's basics. When I was in high school, my best friend made great pies and taught me how to bake a pie, as my mom never made them.

I can't remember not cooking. I always loved eating and cooking LOL. And, if you cook, you get to choose what you eat!!! My Mum said if you could read, you could cook!

I suppose I started with Dad's English breakfast, then cakes and desserts. Mum had a lot of cookery books and was a wonderful cook. I could choose from Larrousse gastronomique, Elisabeth David and A book of Mediterranean food from 1950..... and a load of others that I can't remember. I was always curious about food from all over the world. Mum cooked things like artichokes and we ate avocados that most people weren't eating in England in the early 60s. My besty at school's Dad was Italian and he had restaurants so I loved watching what they did. He made me eat spaghetti properly with just a fork and I got to taste lovely things like home-made gnocchi - unheard of for most Brits at the time. Lucky girl that I was! I think that's what's wonderful about food. You never stop learning and trying something new.

Elisabeth David is a favorite in my house!

It had to be fried, because Dad fried everthing except pot roast and meatloaf. Most likely chicken. I always cut up a whole chicken. There were no chicken parts. I always helped him and my maternal grandmother. Like I said by 10 or 11 I was cooking by myself. My mother could NOT cook. She did not want to and always had a good excuse, sick or asthma. She burned water. Dad did not get off work until 5pm, so I started taking over in self defense. I did not like starving.

Skipping down to comment in case this thread gets even longer while I read all the replies 😄

A cooking demonstration at our local electric company's headquarters when I was in elementary school made a big impression on me. They showed us how to cook buttered broccoli from a box of frozen spears and something with cherry pie filling (fruit crisp?). I don't recall making a full dinner for the family at any time, tho - meals were almost always a shared effort and we kids all started cooking our own meals once we became teens and everyone was on a different schedule. My mom let us experiment in the kitchen too. I remember my little sisters making empanadas, choux pastry & lemon meringue pie, and I liked to bake breads.

We had Home Ec in Jr. High and learned how to make baked mac & cheese from scratch and biscuits too. I don't recall any other dishes, but I'm sure there must've been others.

I feel like I've always cooked and enjoy making all kinds of relatively basic things.

When I moved back home with my folks in the 80s, I did the shopping and cooking, so I guess that would be when I made full meals for everybody. I watched Jaques Pepin & Martha Stewart on TV and read Bon Appetit, Gourmet and the Time Life International cookbooks for inspiration. I also read the Larousse Gastronomique from cover to cover. My parents were in a gourmet supper club in the 1970s, hence all those magazines and books.

My father "was" a chef before a country club manager. He taught my mom how to drive AND how to cook. Mondays the Country Club was closed, so dad cooked. Then every Tuesday was red chili, then spaghetti Wednesdays. Then we ate at the CC the rest of the week. :0) I remember I requested Pizza. That was the ONE where she went ALL out. She got it perfected, then started freezing the pizzas. For some odd reason they fermented when she froze them....?